We examine whether anticipated gender discrimination—specifically, gendered sanctions for leadership failure—decreases women’s leadership ambitions. We find that laypeople expect that women leaders will be punished more harshly for failure than otherwise similar men. We also compare the leadership ambitions of women and men under conditions of benign and costly failure and find that leadership roles with costly failure—which implicitly have the potential for gendered sanctions for failure—disproportionally depress women’s leadership ambitions relative to men’s. Anticipated sanctions for failure mediate this effect, providing evidence that anticipated gender discrimination reduces women’s leadership ambitions. These results illuminate microlevel foundations of the stalled revolution by demonstrating how gendered beliefs about leadership are recreated, legitimized, and contribute to the dearth of women leaders. These findings also suggest that organizational responses to failure may produce gender differences in leadership ambitions and risk-taking behavior.

中文翻译：

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谁想领导？预期的性别歧视减少了妇女的领导野心

我们研究了预期的性别歧视（特别是针对领导力失败的性别制裁）是否会降低女性的领导野心。我们发现，外行人期望女性领导者比其他方面的男性受到更大的惩罚。我们还比较了在良性和代价高昂的失败条件下男女领导的野心，发现具有代价高昂的失败的领导角色（隐含着对失败进行性别制裁的潜力）会相对于男性降低女性的领导野心。预期的对失败的制裁将调解这种影响，提供证据表明预期的性别歧视会降低妇女的领导野心。这些结果通过展示如何重新创建，合法化对领导力的性别观念并助长了女性领导人的匮乏，从而阐明了停滞革命的微观基础。这些发现还表明，组织对失败的反应可能会导致领导野心和冒险行为产生性别差异。